A human mission to Mars has been widely regarded as the ultimate goal for space exploration in our time. Exploration of Mars has been limited to observations from orbit and a few rover expeditions that each cover about 20 km. The vast amount of Mars surface remains to be explored in situ. These limitations were mainly due to the cost of launching high mass payloads to Mars. After 100 years and a thousand studies, human missions to Mars remain in an early concept stage. The advent of the SpaceX Starship with its putative capability to affordably land a 100 MT payload on Mars enables new, more ambitious approaches for exploring Mars at a grander scale. Here, we outline a mission to scientifically explore a wide swath of Mars utilizing the SpaceX Starship to deliver unprecedented amounts of materiel to Mars. A main landing site provides the command-and-control hub for distributed assets across Mars. A pair of communication satellites enables almost instantaneous command, control, and data retrieval. While SpaceX viewed this mission as an early step in establishing a settlement on Mars, we view it as an opportunity to scientifically explore the planet. Two variations of the mission employ different approaches for returning from Mars. The Mars Leviathan mission utilizes a Starship to leave LEO, land on Mars, and return from Mars to LEO. The major challenge in the “Mars Leviathan” mission is to produce a large mass of propellants via ISRU to ascend the crew of 12 in a Starship from Mars and return to Earth. Alternatively, we propose a “DRA-6” mission that uses a Starship to leave LEO and land on Mars, but for return, it uses a small capsule to lift a crew of six from Mars and rendezvous with an Earth Return Vehicle waiting in Mars orbit. The added capability of Starship enables the avoidance of the challenges involved in utilizing indigenous water on Mars by bringing water from Earth. In addition, water for life support is brought from Earth.
Rapp Donald (Wed,) studied this question.